I cover the video game industry, write about gamers, and review video games.
You can follow me on Twitter and hit me up there if you have any questions or comments you'd like to chat about.
Disclosure: Many of the video games I review were provided as free review copies. This does not influence my coverage or reviews of these games.
I do not own stock in any of the companies I cover. I do not back any Kickstarter projects related to video games. I do not fund anyone in the industry on Patreon.

Conan O'Brien, Hitman, And Ludonarrative Dissonance In Video Games

“Ludonarrative dissonance, a term first coined by the game designer Clint Hocking, arises whenever a video game’s fiction says one thing and its gameplay says an opposite thing,” video game critic Tom Bissell wrote in his review of Max Payne 3. “Some designers and critics regard ludonarrative dissonance as a core problem in modern game design.”

Oddly, game design has done little to distance itself from this problem.

Take, for example, Hitman: Absolution. This is a stealth game about a bald guy with a barcode tattooed to the back of his head. You can put on a costume to disguise yourself, but the disguise is blown if people wearing the same clothes get too close to you. Sometimes shooting a car causes it to blow up; often it does not. I don’t mean to pick on Hitman either; many games are much worse at this sort of inconsistency.

The above video game “review” of Hitman: Absolution by Conan O’Brien is probably the best review of that game that I’ve encountered, largely because it hilariously and unwittingly exposes some of the most irritating and consistent flaws in video game design.

Basically each of his jokes says something profoundly important about games whether or not he realizes it, and this is (I suspect) mainly because here we have someone who doesn’t play video games at all playing one and simply speaking his mind. The conceit of many video games these days is that you can get away with bad writing and preposterous narrative choices simply because it’s a game.

After all, if a game like Call of Duty is the top seller year over year, why do anything to change? That franchise is brimming with ludonarrative dissonance, but it sells like hotcakes.

In modern games you can have a stealth title where the AI simply stops looking for you after a while even though you’ve been running around killing them off one at a time, a fact they’re well aware of but apparently too forgetful to care about.

You can have a game in which you slaughter hordes upon hordes of enemies only to suddenly cut to a pre-rendered scene where one simple bullet takes your avatar down for the count. You are helpless against these cut-scenes in a way that you are never helpless against your digital opponents.

I think that as players of games, as consumers who spend vast amounts of time playing them, we can sometimes forget how ludicrous they can be to an outsider. We can overlook the small details that, to a non-gamer, might be much more garish and obtuse. Not that “outsiders” should necessarily determine the future of game design; rather, games should strive to be more sensible in terms of not just story, but in terms of clear cut rules that make sense within the game world itself. And we should be less complacent.

Thanks to everyone who pointed me toward Conan O’Brien as a model for game review scores. Spot on.

P.S. The flipside to this is that a game like Hitman is, regardless of its foibles, pretty fun at times. Games can get away with this stuff not only because we’re complacent, but because they can still be fun regardless. Though I would argue that they are more fun when they follow a strict set of internal rules that make sense both in terms of narrative and gameplay.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Been watching these since the beginning, sadly his chubby neckbearded redditor “web guy” won’t let him play anything unless they can make some scratch promoting it, which is fine, but I think it denies Conan some more surprising experiences which would be rather delightful entertainment. I can only imagine Conan contending with the Taurus demon, blasting Grineer, delighting in Portal 2, or lopping off a haughty Archer’s head in Chivalry, there are some pretty keen moments in each I’d love to see a non-gamer delight in, and given how averse non or casual gamers are to a full gaming experience apart from nothing, or, worse, FarmVille, a delicacy for we gamers to enjoy.

Hey Garrett! We have been lucky enough to attract some sponsors to CG, but most of our Clueless Gamers have actually not been sponsored; Skyrim, Halo 4, Minecraft, Star Wars Kinect, Michael Phelps, etc. – those have all just been games that I thought would be fun to play with Conan.

While not all games are right for Clueless Gamer (for instance: Portal 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I’m not totally convinced that it would have enough interactive pieces or differences between levels to work for a comedy sketch), I’m always on the lookout for new games… and am totally open to suggestions! I’ll give Dark Souls, Warframe, and Chivalry a look for sure. You’re actually like the ninth person to tell me about Dark Souls, so it’s got some hype to live up to.

Regardless of what you think of our sponsored episodes, thanks for watching Clueless Gamer! They’re really fun to make, Conan loves doing them, and it makes me happy that people like ‘em! Also, if you have more videogame suggestions, just hit me up on my FB – or on twitter @BigBley.

(Also, as a chubby guy, let me just say that my neckbeard is a ABSOLUTE NECESSITY: A. It makes me look like I have a jawline, and B. It’s like I grew a rug on my face and swept my neck fat under it! HIGHLY recommended for any other fat guys out there.)

On Portal 2; have you tried doing a co-op for the sketch? Probably the funniest times I’ve had with a video game have been working “together” with another person to fail to solve simple puzzles for an hour because there’s a laser you can shoot the other guy with.

Aaron, thanks for the comment! If you guys do play Dark Souls (which is a great game) be aware that Conan will likely just die a bunch. And unlike Skyrim, there are no chickens to kill…or, for that matter, hot girls to flirt with.

This is yet another reason Dark Souls is such a good game. The mechanics never change at any point in the game. You would think that would be a given in a game, but has become surprisingly the opposite.

I would say Mass Effect 2 and 3 are the very worst offenders of this. In cutscenes you have various Asari doing wreaking incredible destruction with their powers, using their powers to block incomng fire…

…and outside of cutscenes they can’t manage to do as much damage as the most basic of pistols, nor can they stop dieing every thirty seconds to incoming fire.

How these things were played in a room full of people during development and no one said “Um, guys, isn’t this a bit contradictory?” I’ll never know.